texanjoker wrote:VMI77 wrote:surprise_i'm_armed wrote:Well the actions taken by the LEO's were certainly out of the norm, and not desirable from a purely
Constitutional viewpoint.
So what are most of you advocating... that the Boston LEO's should have just gone back to their police station for coffee
and donuts and waited for the bomber brothers to turn themselves in? Sheesh.
They did a manhunt for proven killers, they had a 200 or more round shootout, they killed one of them, and captured
the other one. All in only 4 days from the time of the explosions.
Some people wouldn't be happy if they got hung with a new rope. :-)
SIA
No, they didn't really do a manhunt.....in a real manhunt they would have been using dogs to find the guy like the military uses dogs to find insurgents. Dogs can pick up a trail that is hours old. So why no dogs? Looks to me like they had other priorities, and finding the suspect was not #1.
And another thing that strikes me is the very dangerous way they dragged people out of their homes. In the first place, people in other homes could see what was going on, so there was zero element of surprise had the BG been in one of the homes. They weren't carefully evaluating a potential hostage situation, just kicking in doors....so what would have happened if the BG had surrounded himself with children, mom and dad, and started shooting at the cops when they came through the door? Is that how the cops would have entered if they KNEW a BG was in a home and there was a potential hostage situation....straight through the front door? We know the answer is NOT. So, for expediency they were willing to sacrifice the citizens they're supposed to protect. This was much less a manhunt and much more an exercise in the display of power.
I'll have to address your dog comments as I saw k9's all over the news. I am not sure what you know about dogs, but I have personally worked 2 different dogs so I know a thing or two about doing a man hunt with a k9. You can be sure they tried track the suspect when he fled the vehicle, but tracking a suspect on concrete is a lot different then on grass, ect. Once you loose the scent it becomes a yard to yard or house to house search in the area of containment/perimeter. That is an off leash search in each yard with the dog doing an air scent search. The danger in that type of search is that anybody in the yard is going to get bit so you cannot just do that without extreme caution to avoid an accidental bite. When not doing an off leash search, you work with the team and keep the dog on leash. Given the fact these guys shot at the police and threw explosives, it is going to be a very slow methodical search. You will need numerous dog teams like I saw, and lots of breaks for the dogs as they get tired.
In the video that started this post I am unclear where they are dragging people out of homes. They have people coming out with their hands up. The house is contained and appears to be a different search then all the other footage I have seen. They then have them go down the street. Is "drag' just a term or is there another video where they are "physically dragging" them out of a home.
I wanted to add there are probably areas in this where they should have done better and better respected peoples rights doing the search. I would be curious if it was the same teams that were the more aggressive..I would also be curious the make up of the those teams with regard to combat veterans. No knock on vets, but I have seen the combat vets (Iraq/afghan) take up more aggressive positions when the become LEOs because that is how they operated over seas which doesn't transform well to US SOIL.
Besides having dogs that aren't search dogs, my only knowledge is what I've read about how the military trains and uses various types of dogs. I saw no use of dogs for the search in any of the videos. No checking of a house or yard before entry. I can't be sure of anything....but I've read that they didn't track the suspect with dogs when he fled the vehicle. Now we're also discovering that the surviving brother was unarmed when he was captured. While this doesn't affect how the search was conducted because it wouldn't have been known at the time, the police apparently lied when they claimed they had a gun fight with the suspect and riddled the boat with bullets. So, if they lied about that, we have no way of knowing what else they lied about (and when I say police in this context, I'm talking about the frequently liberal people in charge, not the rank and file officers).
I used "drag" as a term, admittedly inaccurate based on the video I've seen, although I have seen video where police grabbed and pulled someone along when then weren't moving fast enough to suit them while yelling at them like they were prisoners in a cell block. On the video linked the guy describes being ordered out of the house at gunpoint, and when he asked if he could put his shoes on, was just ordered to move out now. Didn't say he was "grabbed" but it seems like sort of a distinction without much of a difference. Common sense should tell anyone that a guy asking to put on his shoes in that situation was not in any danger and was therefore not being held hostage in his residence. The reality is, the treatment of citizens by the police was strictly for the convenience of the police. It's just a lot easier to point a gun at someone --which at it's root is a threat to kill them-- and yell for them to move, than to treat a person as if they're an actual free citizen with inalienable rights. That's the whole point of a police state, to make it easy for the police, and by extension, the government.
Aside from the contempt shown law abiding citizens, the whole thing strikes me as a kind of keystone cops episode. Two bombs go off. The authorities say they have no idea who did it and appeal to the public for help. After the responding public wrongly identifies two sets of innocent suspects (coach/runner and guys working for The Craft) the FBI finally identifies the suspect after one of the bombing victims points him out. Then it turns out that the FBI had interviewed one of the bombers at the request of the Russians and had at some time placed them under surveillance....yet they had "no idea" who the bombers could be, for what, the first three days of the investigation? Would they ever have tumbled without the witness? They could have picked them up easily on day one or two. Then, after the FBI makes public who they are looking for, the brothers start to run and end up in a shootout with police. At this point you have to wonder if the FBI had yet figured out who the brothers were because if they had they could have arrested them rather easily --as at least one of the brothers was attending school. Somehow, the younger brother eludes the police and hides out, so they shut down a part of the city, close down the highways and public transportation and lockdown people in their homes like they're trying to establish order in a prison. The police force people out of their homes at gunpoint, point guns at people looking out their windows ---which I emphasize again is a threat to kill-- and with all the high tech available like FLIR, and including dogs, can't find one untrained 19 year old until a homeowner points him out. The police show up and shoot the guy's boat to pieces, and we later find out the suspect was unarmed, after the police claimed they engaged him in a gun battle. And this is after some 10 years of building up law enforcement and spending billions of dollars to fight "terrorism," as well as eviscerating the Constitution. What's the pay off, a couple of guys on welfare rig up some bombs and kill and injure a bunch of people right under the nose of a bunch of clueless authorities. Veterans can't buy guns due to erroneous NCIS checks, but foreign nationals associated with Russian terrorists and reported by the Russian government get to live here on welfare, become American citizens ON WELFARE, and then blow up Americans. THIS is what is being celebrated in Boston....what looks like incompetence to me, but at best is stunning mediocrity.
And we need to keep this in perspective...there are armed teenage murderers running about in every large US city. Geez, more people are probably killed over the weekend in Chicago than were killed in Boston. ONE 19 yo believed to be armed, and on the run, got a city shut down. The gang problem in LA is a far worse problem than one desperate teenager on the run, yet they're not shutting down LA and going house to house. This Boston episode sets a very dangerous precedent, which I don't at all doubt was part of the reason for the way the authorities responded. If one teenager is this much of a threat in Boston, then why not do the same for a murderous teen on the loose in Chicago, LA, New York, Houston, or La Grange?
"Journalism, n. A job for people who flunked out of STEM courses, enjoy making up stories, and have no detectable integrity or morals."
From the WeaponsMan blog, weaponsman.com
